 Okay, welcome to guitar class for NCSSM's classical piano and guitar course. This is the introductory guitar lesson. We're going to give you just the very basics of learning to play the guitar. First of all, the guitar is a six string instrument, and I want you to know the names of the strings. Now, we'll talk about the names of the strings from lowest to highest. When we talk about low to high, we're talking about pitch, low pitches to high pitches, but the physical orientation of the instrument. So when you're looking at the guitar strings as you're holding the guitar, it might look like the lowest pitched string is really the one that's the highest pitch. The lowest pitch is this one, so we're starting up here. The names of the strings are from low to high, E, A, D, G, B. And the highest pitched string is another E. We have a footstool for every guitar player, and I'd like you to make sure that you do have a footstool to prop your foot up on. It's really important that your feet aren't both on the floor when you're playing the guitar. Now, there are two ways to hold a guitar. You can either hold a guitar in a classical style where your left foot is on the footstool, or you can hold a guitar in a folk style where your right foot is on the stool. Now, in either case, when it's on the, when you're in the classical style and your left foot is on the stool, the guitar is going to rest on your left thigh. Now for the purposes of all of these demonstrations, I'm going to be holding a guitar in the classical style, but I'm very comfortable if you want to play in the folk style as well. Now, I want you to know what to do with both your left and your right hands. Now, first of all, the guitar is going to sit on your thigh, again, either on the left or the right, depending on the style. Therefore, right arm is going to be coming over the guitar at the widest part of the body. Now, your fingertips are going to sit right on the guitar, and your thumb is going to strum the strings right at the back edge of the sound hole. Reason for that is it's really the best sound on a guitar. If we come back here, we're going to get a much more tinny sound. If we come up here, we're going to get a much more dark sound. Really for now, this is the sound that we want. Now with your left hand, I want you to make what basically amounts to a four with your left hand. When it rests on the neck, your fingers are going to come straight up around the neck. Now a lot of students make a few mistakes. Many students let this thumb lay down this way. Now, this wouldn't be a four. This is a four. This thumb would be basically vertical. Now you're going to place your fingers right behind these metal lines called frets. When you depress the string right behind that fret, you're going to get a nice tone. I want you to use the tips of your fingers, not the flat part of your finger, but the tip of your finger to get a good tone. Now if your finger strays back in the fret, chances are it's going to buzz. So you want your finger to be right up here. Now as we're playing, no matter where you are playing, no matter what song you're playing, you will have one finger for each adjacent fret. This would be the first fret, and I would use my index finger. This would be the second fret. I'd use my middle finger, third fret, ring finger, fourth fret, pinky finger. And as a guitarist, I'm going to try to stay in a position where I can use one finger for each adjacent fret as much as I possibly can. Now, for some of these even earliest songs in guitar, you may decide that you want your first finger or your index finger on the second fret, your middle finger on the third fret, your ring finger on the fourth, and your pinky finger on the fifth, and that's perfectly fine. Your index on the third, middle finger on the fourth, ring finger on the fifth, and so on. That's your decision, but as a guitarist, we don't want to be shifting around any more than we have to. So pick a spot and stay there. Now we've covered the basics of the technique, and now what I'd like you to try to do is I'd like you to try to pluck each of the strings covering various frets with your fingers. So in other words, you may decide to work on the lowest string, the E string, and I'd recommend that you start there and play four notes with no fingers down. Then put your index finger down and play four notes on the first fret. Now your middle finger on the second fret four times, ring finger on the third fret, and your pinky finger on the fourth fret. Take a look at a couple of things. Make sure that your thumb is still basically vertical, and note if your fingers are coming straight up across the fingerboard, if they're doing something like this, then you need to change your position a little bit. Now let's talk just for a moment about reading the music. We're going to start by learning to read tablature. Music staff has five lines, tablature staff has six lines. We're going to be reading the tablature to start. You're going to notice that the lowest line on the tablature has some numbers written on it. That lowest line represents the lowest pitch string on the guitar, the low E string, and each of those numbers represents the number of frets that are going to be depressed at any given time for any given note. You'll notice that the first three notes in Easy Blues are zero, zero, and three. So for that, I would play the open E twice and the third fret on the E string once. Then you'll notice that the next zero is on the next line, which represents the A string. So the first four notes are, and that should give you a basic idea of how to read tablature. From there, we'll begin to learn some songs.